World War II Wiki:Newsletter Archive 1
This is the first newsletter archive. Here you can find the first newsletters the wiki published.__TOC__ For the first newsletter, I decided to more or less sum up what happened over the course of the year which is what the newsletter is partly about. I cannot sum up everything as I have only started editing for the wiki for about five months out of twelve, but I can say that a lot certainly happened. Over the course of half a year, the wiki has well over doubled in size, but still no new contributors. This is rather unfortunate, however there are many new viewers and I strongly encourage people to join in. I am always prepared to help new users how might be confused and I'm sure it will be a nice experiance. Even by just putting a vote and saying your opinion on polls, you become part of the community. British Pride Month which began on Nov. 1st isn't attracting much attention and sadly it has only gotten two entries. November is still here and maybe you would like to join in and if you feel like something is missing;causing you to back out from editing tell us at the community portal! New Contests and goals for December 2011 Among the contests and goals for december are the 200 page goal which is to try to get 200 pages by the end of the year, and Battle of the Bulge Month which is going to have more details revealed later. However, some details such as some rules are as followed: Rules #All entries must say they are entered by saying so in the edit summary section #If an article is entered, it must either have the Edit Protection template meaning it is currently being edited or it must be complete. More rules and details to be revealed later as said above. Update 11/18/11 Back on the matter of details about Battle of the Bulge Month, there will be 2 winners. These winners will be judged upon how much information was found and on how many pages were completed. The winners will go on a list of honored editors who show dedication for their contributions. All of this along with a hardy congratulation. As with all contests, no one will be forced to only write articles about the Battle of the Bulge and you are free to write about what you wish (as long as its WWII!). Newsletter November 20, 2011 |align="left" width="100%"| by Fargo84 |} Well here's a new update to the newsletter, everytime a newsletter is published, there will be fact of what happened today in WWII. Well today the famous Nurembourg Trials began and 24 important nazi officials were tried. Anyway, British Pride Month is ending and only 3 articles have been made. If you have any ideas on how to improve the wiki, do visit the Community Portal Talk area. Also, I going to change the rules of the Wanted Pages and instead of having a list of important articles, the Wanted Pages are going to be a list of articles that you, the viewer, would like to see on this wiki. For this newsletter, I will talk about status on goals and since the last newsletter, a WWII fact. Ok so for the WWII fact, in 1941, US commanders in the Pacific were warned of a possible war with Japan. The specific commander informed was Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. President Roosevelt had even informed Winston Churchill that "we must all prepare for trouble". Getting back to the wiki, the goal of completing 200 pages by the end of the year seems just within reach and Battle of the Bulge Month is nearly here. I have decided that from now on themed months will usually not be contests and they will just be things to focus on. I also redesigned the top navigation so it would reach to more areas of the wiki, but I ran into a problem. Only a couple of the aircraft in the menu are completed pages. Not even the Junkers Ju 87 is complete as it is missing variants and the Henschel Hs 129 is just incomplete. This is bad because if you try to click one of the options it will most likely show the page is incomplete. First of all, we need to complete those pages to make the wiki complete and second of all, this may drive away viewers. So my message to any people watching the site is please ignore the incomplete pages as it takes editors generally about 2 hours to write only one aircraft and 20 is a lot. Sorry for making anybody disappointed, but the wiki still has tons of great pages to view. Back to other changes, I'm planning to redesign the main page with all new headers and "fancy" items, but I really don't know what else to add besides that. Lastly, I hope that if the quiz function becomes available that I will be able to set some up. If anybody has comments post them below. Well for this newsletter I don't have much to report, but what I can say besides the WWII fact which is that Enrico Fermi died, is that the wiki is extremely close to 200 pages as we are currently at 177. The best part is that it is not even December! These last 23 pages will be hard, but I know the wiki will be able to pull it off. Maybe just a day before new year or maybe a week before christmas. I also noticed that many people are sharing their thoughts and submitting answers to the polls. Another change, as any viewer would probably notice, originaly I said the newsletter would come out about every few weeks or months, but I decided since I should have enough time, the newsletter will be about every couple of days. Since I'm an admin and I can check the admin dashboard, I see there has been a rise in viewers and I just want to say welcome to any new viewers and I hope everybody has a great time checking out the wiki's pages. Main focuses Well for December, the wiki will go into overdrive to finish stubs and red linked articles. They are annoying and are keeping the wiki from being complete. The current stub percentage is about 14-15% so creating pages from red linked articles really helps balance the percentage of stubs, but eventually all of the stubs will have to be completed. For now, there are no other 200 page by the end of the year type goals besides the goal for 200 pages by the end of the year. Which is certainly less stressful and much more calm. January will be a time of celebration for the wiki's 3rd year of existance. 2012 AKA the third year will be a changing point for the wiki as the community grows and the page number follows. Anyway, there are some new templates that I've been working on that I need approvel and ideas for. The newest version is the "He's Bleeding, He's Bleeding" template signifying a Red Linked article. I'm not really sure how to make a template like that without it showing the template picture in the read more box, but I do know that we're going to need more templates like that. Please post some Ideas in the comments box and do label them. The only template I have in mind currently is the clean up version. For Post Nov. 28 2011 etc This newsletter has been long over due and the year is close to ending. The fact is that on this day, the Battle of the Bulge started. To go along with the months theme and the special day, the Battle of the Bulge Article was created. So far the wiki has had 190 pages, 2 new users, and a lot of images. I welcome all new users and I congratulate Neflen for creating the Battle of the Bulge's page. The main focus now is to get 200 pages by the end of the year which shouldn't be that difficult considering there is only 10 pages left. Today's fact is that in 1941, Hitler took control of the German Army by becoming commander-in-chief. Anyway, the most recent changes made to the wiki were... *Adding of the Historian Command Center Forum so users can discuss WWII *Adding of the list of unsorted pictures and information. *New Policy Pages *Reaching 195 pages *The first archiving of a talk page There were of course some other changes. The wiki's first archive will be followed by many more for talk pages and comments. The list of unsorted information should be very helpful to users as it should be contributed to often. Since the information is unsorted, it doesn't matter how much information is added. Although, the information added must be true! There are only 5 pages until the wiki's goal of 200 and the holidays are coming fast! The historian command center will be the main forum for the wiki as conversations '''should '''be about WWII. The policy pages are not very strict and are just focused on basic rules. Some of these include #No information directly copied from another website (Wikipedia Policy) #Try not to use copyrighted images for articles (Image Policy) #No sockpuppet accounts (Sockpuppet Policy) #Always use references (References Policy) #Always report, revert, or delete any sign of clear vandalism (Vandalism Policy) #Always try to fix misspellings and errors (Grammar Policy) I have some very good news to report on for this newsletter, but first the fact is General George S. Patton Jr. died in a military hospital after being injured in a car accident on the 9th of Dedember. Back to the wiki, the good news is that KingFredrick VI designed a completely new home page for the wiki! I am extremely thankful as the old homepage had some trouble with format. Another great feat is the creation of 200 pages! There will be several updates later this month or in early 2012 that will consist mainly of improved navigation.